LEICA lenses are more than just lenses. They are the world's finest, and therefore have earned registered trademark status.

LEICA does not sell a 50mm f/2 "lens;" LEICA sells a 50mm f/2 "SUMMICRON." LEICA has been naming their lenses for as long as they have been selling lenses.

LEICA has been using some of its trademarks, like ELMAR, since the 1920s. LEICA's trademark simply establishes that lens as the finest in its class. The trademark never identifies any particular lens design, in fact, the same trademarks are used for all focal lengths, and even in different lens mounts.

Trademark names, like "SUMMICRON," are by themselves meaningless, like "Kleenex" or "Tang."

LEICA's trademarks usually correlate directly with the f/stop, thus "SUMMICRON" means the very best f/2 lens LEICA can make.

Each trademark defines its own klasse; its own environment of excellence.

Here is each with its associated milieu, listed in order of descending popularity:

SUMMICRON: f/2

The SUMMICRON is the best lens made by LEICA — or anyone — in any particular era.

The SUMMICRON, at a fast f/2, is at least twice as fast as any professional zoom lens, and more than fast enough for any use in almost any light.

More important than high speed, the SUMMICRON offers the highest optical performance of any lens, and remains reasonably compact at the same time.

If you demand the sharpest lens for your LEICA, it is the SUMMICRON.

The SUMMICRON was first created in 50mm in 1953, followed by 35mm and 90mm in 1958 and 40mm in 1973. The newest SUMMICRON is the 28mm, created in 2000.

SUMMICRONs demand such high performance that these are the only focal lengths in which man can create them — today.

The SUMMICRON is LEICA's best lens for almost all photography: LEICA's highest optical performance with ample speed in a compact package. The SUMMICRON offers the best combination of performance factors. Every other LEICA lens give up something in return for a little more in just one area. For instance, the SUMMILUX offers more speed, but has to sacrifice size and weight and historically lower optical performance for that one rarely used stop of speed.

SUMMILUX: f/1.4

LEICA's f/1.4 SUMMILUX are ultra-speed lenses optimized for low-light photography. They are bigger, heavier and more expensive than the SUMMICRON, with slightly diminished optical performance.

The SUMMILUX are also very popular for general use, even though their optical performance laggs slightly behind the SUMMICRON.

The first SUMMILUX was the 50mm of 1959, followed by a new 50mm SUMMILUX design in 1961, whose optics remained unchanged until replaced by the 50mm SUMMILUX-M ASPH of 2004.

The 35mm SUMMILUX was created in 1960, and remained unchanged until replaced by today's aspherical versions born in the 1990s.

SUMMILUX of extreme focal lengths (21mm, 24mm and 75mm) have been created more for the desiccated vaults of collectors than to be carried in the pockets of real photographers. These extreme SUMMILUX are too big and heavy for true LEICA photography.

ELMARIT: f/2.8

The ELMARIT are popular lenses for the extreme focal lengths: 21mm, 24mm, 28mm and 90mm. The ELMARIT has also come in 135mm super-telephoto.

ELMAR: f/4

ELMAR are tiny, high-performance lenses that embody all that is LEICA: high performance in the smallest possible package.

The ELMAR has also been created in f/2.8 lenses, for instance, LEICA's superb 50mm f/2.8 ELMARs.

NOCTILUX: f/1

NOCTILUX are oversized, special-purpose ultra-speed lenses designed originally for use in extremely low-light. Today, with advances in modern emulsions and "digital" capture, the NOCTILUX is favored mostly by rich collectors. It is too big and blocks too much of the finder for it to be of interest to photographers, for whom the SUMMICRON and SUMMILUX offer more than enough speed, without the size, weight, finder bloockage and increased distortion of the NOCTILUX.

SUMMARIT: f/1.5 and f/2.5

The SUMMARIT was born as LEICA's fastest lens in 1949, at f/1.5. It was replaced by the SUMMILUX.

When LEICA decided to introduce a line of cheap lenses in 2007, it recycled the SUMMARIT name for these f/2.5 lenses. No one buys LEICA based on price; people who buy LEICA demand the best, and thus most of today's SUMMARIT-M lenses remain unsold. Duh.

HEKTOR

HEKTOR was the name of The Prophet's dog, and was the name reserved for LEICA's lowest-performance lenses.

Some of LEICA's words are more meaningful, and few, if any of these, are trademarks:

Mark

Meaning

ASPH

Aspherical

APO

Apochromatic

TELE, TELYT

Telephoto

TRI*, VARIO

Zoom

* Because LEICA's M camera finders only work at a few fixed focal lengths, LEICA's zooms for their rangefinder cameras only stop at three click-stopped values corresponding to the few available frame lines of the M cameras. Since LEICA's zooms only stop at three settings, Leica calls them TRI-ELMAR to avoid using the word "zoom."

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